Citations for Purported Echo Abilities

[Bright-Flower]

Not really, it's mostly a thing that the fans ran with. What Y'shtola theorizes is that Fordola can read the enemy's intent with her Echo, basically by attuning herself to their aether and reacting appropriately, but this would be a more general prescience and not specifically about AoE markers. To put it in game terms, Fordola would get a 100% evade buff by knowing what her opponent will do before they do it. But this doesn't mean she sees the red circles or whatever, it means she can dodge any punch, sword, or knife sent her way.

It's easy to see where the mix-up happened, after all, that's a similar base for how we the PCs can see AoEs. Except hers involve ST and AoE abilities. Example: You cannot dodge a tank buster, but she could.

Basically, AoE markers are "Gameplay and Story Segregation", and the Hall of the Novice tell was a tongue-in-cheek way of explaining it to new players without having a character step beyond the "fourth wall" and explain mechanics like an old-school RPG.

This. Also not all echo users have the same abilities exactly. Fordola's thing was unique and required Uriangr giving us a plot coupon to disrupt it.

These things are just game mechanics that don't need explanation. Just as there doesn't need to be an explanations for why we can do content more than once, or why I can't put on a fending helmet while carrying a bow etc.

[Rymi64]

The echo isn't involved with aoe markers or wipes I'm dungeons/trials. Aoe markers is just people noticing the enemy's tell and reacting to it (like the boss has their right hand up and will probably hit to their right side). Fordolas resonant does not allow her to see aoe markers but it does allow her to essentially predict the opponents next move since it was copied from krile who's echo allows her to see a person's intent

We currently have no explanation for wipes in lore but we can say for a fact it's not future vision echo since the only character we know in lore that has that is mikoto.

[Vyrerus]

Uhm, there's a few fights with the Scions... think it was Alphinaud at one point? They say something like, "I can sense the aether swelling. Get ready for an attack!" Then a group stack AOE marker goes out. So it's something that can be sense by people who can manipulate aether or any magitek device that detects aether as well, as far as AOE markers go.

The Gladiator questline has Aldis remark on, "watch how she fights; it's not exactly high theater." or something like that, so there's also the physical reading that we do.

As far as the Echo buff in combat goes, it's most comparable to the Blessing of Light received from Hydaelyn during the Ultima Weapon encounter. Basically, you're supposed to be destined to beat the fight, so your power swells up with the Echo. But this buff is also implemented by the devs on old raid content automatically without any wiping required for things like Binding Coil and Savage Alexander and such.

In theory, if we could control the Echo, then we could use it to view the past of our adversary to see exactly how they fight and to know all of their moves, since viewing the past is what our Echo does. Of course, not all of our adversaries are combat veterans, like Tsukuyomi, so it's not really for reading moves. I coulda sworn though, that there was an aspect to it that made Echo blessed individuals more proficient in combat. Better able to sense aether swells and things, maybe?